About León Ferrari

Referencing postwar movements like Abstract Expressionism, Fluxus, Arte Povera, Minimalism, Process art, and appropriation art, León Ferrari's work comprises wood, ceramic, and wire sculptures, mobiles, drawings, collages, and paintings. An engineer who came to drawing via sculpture, Ferrari explores language as a visual material in his “written drawings,” which use symbols and the gestures of handwriting to convey emotion. Often critical of religious and political authority, Ferrari was exiled to Brazil in 1976 for his ideology. His controversial 1985 work Last Judgment is a reproduction of Michelangelo’s famed fresco, which the artist left beneath a cage of pigeons.